Life, photos, karma, and all the rest

I’m finally back in the UK after a couple very busy, educational, and enjoyable weeks in the US. And now I have a cold – a light one – but a cold nonetheless. Sadly, the first thing to go when I get even mildly sick is my mind. I just returned from shopping for stay-at-home-sick supplies and instead of buying fresh ginger and lemon (for tea), I bought a price-reduced pizza.

I’m afraid that being in NYC makes me want to eat pizza by the slice all day – and that hasn’t quite worn off yet.

I did manage to get tea and packets of soup-in-a-cup though, so I’m well prepared to keep calm and carry on.

While we’re at that, here are some pics from Ithaca, NY, where I visited my friend Tony, a philosophy professor in NY.

The fall colors were indeed amazing. I wish I had had more time (and more clear days, it was often pretty rainy) to explore and photograph it all. But what I did have was great and I’m sure I’ll be back.

And another night with Stefania Travagnin at “The Lion Shrine” for the Nittany Lion, the Penn State mascot. It was homecoming week and tradition has it that the shrine is now protected from attack by the opposing team/school, hence the ROTC guards. Unfortunately, between them and us, only about 10% of the lion can be seen. Oh well.

And finally, one of my last sights in NYC.

The karma bit I’ll leave for another post, as my stuffy head and lack of coffee have teamed up to make even simple sentences slow to write. The gist of the post will come from a recent guest post from Thanissaro Bhikkhu. I have some reservations about the post – is he setting up a straw man with the first sentence? Who are these ‘scholars’?

But the heart of it I agree with. The Buddha’s teaching is filled with references to karma and rebirth. AND the Buddha could well have taught without these. In other words, he could have been a naturalist. But he wasn’t. Naturalism is a somewhat vague category, admittedly, so just how the Buddha was or was not a naturalist in this regard is debatable.

The idea of Buddhist ethics naturalized was the topic of one of the panels at the recent Buddhist ethics conference in NYC. It included the great Robert Thurman, and it’s all available in audio – have a listen.